


A Requiem for Mister Spider

by stilitana



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Free Will, Friendship, Gen, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:53:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22885078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stilitana/pseuds/stilitana
Summary: In which a fly endeavors to know the nature of the web, or: Jon encounters a familiar Leitner, and reflections upon what it means to have a choice ensue.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Jonathan Sims & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 21
Kudos: 244





	A Requiem for Mister Spider

**Author's Note:**

> Hello dear reader, I relistened to MAG 81 and had to put all of my feelings somewhere, and so this fic was born. As always, feel free to contact me on tumblr @stilitana, and comments and critique are welcome! They make my day. Thank you for reading.

> “Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly;  
> “’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.  
> The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,  
> And I have many pretty things to show when you are there.”  
> “O no, no,” said the little fly, “to ask me is in vain,  
> For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”
> 
> — Mary Howitt, "The Spider and the Fly"

Jon stood in the hall staring at the door to the office of the head of the Magnus Institute, where he’d been summoned for his second interview. A second interview—that was a good sign, surely? If they hadn’t liked him—hadn't found him qualified, or capable, they’d have let him know after the first, right? He found himself twisting his fingers together and forced his hands apart, let them hang limply at his sides. Was he dressed appropriately, or did he look as foolish as he felt—like a child wearing an adult’s clothes, a nobody playing at professionalism? He knew the importance of appearance, but that did not mean he enjoyed trying to look the part of a proper academic. He wished his resume could speak for itself, so that it didn’t matter what he wore or what he looked like—but he knew his youth, his lack of work experience or high-demand skills, all left him a rather average candidate. Not too shabby, he hoped—but certainly not a standout. 

He took a deep breath and raised his fist to knock on the door. Before he could do so, it swung open, momentarily unbalancing him. 

The man who greeted him fixed Jon with an unnerving, unblinking gaze that sharpened when his eyes locked with Jon’s. Jon couldn’t bring himself to look away. (He’d never known when to look away, not effortlessly, as other people seemed to know—but to have his own intent, prolonged eye-contact turned back on himself was new.) The gaze bore into him, seemed to see inside of him. He shivered. 

Then the moment passed, and the man extended a hand. “Jonathan Sims, I’m Elias Bouchard, director of the institute. It’s a pleasure to see you for myself.” 

Was that an odd way to greet someone? Jon couldn’t be sure. He’d come to the conclusion long ago that he himself was often considered odd, and so didn’t always trust his own judgement when it came to the relative normalcy of others. So he simply tried for a smile and nodded. 

He hadn’t expected to be asked about his childhood. But with those blank, unfeeling eyes on his face, he found himself answering whatever was asked of him, without much hesitance. 

There was a spider in the corner of Elias’ office. He could see it in his peripheral vision, over Elias’ right shoulder. He could hear it weaving. The sound of its legs running up and down and along the silky sinewy length of its web. He found his gaze drifting to it for longer and longer intervals, and tried not to wince at the sound of its weaving. Like a damp finger tracing the curvature of a crystal glass—that fine, eerie vibration. Fingers up and down a taut harp string—not plucking, not making music, only a sort of skin-to-wire thrumming, a ripple in the air. He heard the air rushing, Elias’ mouth moving but making no sound, only the horrible magnified rhythm of the spider weaving its web, the microscopic ultra-fine hairs on its legs rustling against its own silk. 

“Jonathan? Jon? May I call you Jon?” 

Jon blinked, refocusing on Elias. He became aware that his back was cold and slick with sweat, his mouth parched. “Yes?” 

Elias smiled. It was a bland, mild-mannered expression. He stood and once more offered his hand and Jon mirrored him. “Perfect. Well, Jon, it’s been a real pleasure. I think you’re an excellent fit for the job. Expect to receive a formal offer along with some more information about the position within the next couple of days—I believe you’ve already spoken to Rosie, she’ll send it along—unless you’re feeling eager, and would rather get to the paperwork straight away?” 

Jon faltered, momentarily speechless. Had he just landed the job? Just like that? His gaze drifted to the spider once more, and Elias’ sharp gaze followed the motion like an owl tracing the scurrying of a field mouse. His smile tightened. “Ah. Spiders. Pesky little pests—can't say I’m fond of them, but they have their uses, I suppose.” 

He turned his smile back on Jon, who swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to return the grin. 

He filled out the paperwork that day, and was hired on the spot. 

There is a popular notion that ghosts are remnants of habit. Like the canned, repetitious melody inside a music box, playing out until the cylinders cease turning, so too does our muscle memory go on walking circles round the neighborhood, flitting back and forth before a bedroom window, unbodied. The muscles return to the dirt and are eaten by worms but the memory remains. 

So too with the living. 

By the time the Head Archivist died in the line of duty, she had sunk into such obscurity that the rest of the institute hardly noted her passing. All of her archival assistants were dead and gone, and she’d never been the most sociable woman. During the last few years she’d scarcely been seen outside the basement archives. 

There was a brief remembrance vigil held around noon, orchestrated by some of the staff—people who had not known her, but who nonetheless felt obligated to somehow mark her passing. 

“What’s going on in here?” Jon muttered, sidling up beside Tim in the crowded cafeteria. 

“Some sort of a wake for Gertrude Robinson.” 

Jon frowned, his face pinched. “Really? Here?” 

“What? You don’t think it’s appropriate, mourning our dearly departed colleague where we all eat lunch?” 

“I guess it’s a good reminder to watch what we eat.” 

Tim stifled a snort. “You’re horrible.” 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you two were so close.” 

“Listen. If I die in the line of duty—” 

“What, crushed by a filing cabinet? Bled out from a thousand papercuts? Drowned in tea?” 

“Don’t you dare let anybody pull a stunt like this in my honor. You got that?” 

“You mean you _don’t_ think a eulogy performed by strangers in the cafeteria is a suitable send-off?” 

“Seriously.” 

Jon rolled his eyes. “All right, Tim. I promise that if and when you should perish while checking out books at the library or flirting with filing clerks, I will not let our colleagues mourn you in the cafeteria.” 

“You’re a real pal, Jon.” 

“How long is this going to take?” 

“Hungry? Me too. My lunch is in the fridge.” 

“M-hm.” 

“Just didn’t feel quite right to grab it and go.” 

“No, no, of course.” 

Jon turned at a gentle pressure on his shoulder, and there was Elias, leaning down to speak to him, his voice low. “There you are. A word in my office, Jon.” 

Jon glanced at Tim, who waggled his eyebrows, before following Elias out of the room and down the hall. 

“You’ll need to appoint assistants,” Elias said. “Or else I’m afraid you’ll find the archives quite lonely.” 

“There’s no one left?” 

“It’s understaffed, at the moment.” 

“So I—right. An entirely new staff.” 

Elias slid a piece of paper across his desk. “I understand it’s overwhelming. Of course, the decision is yours, but I thought you might appreciate a little guidance. You have your own new position to settle into, on top of hiring and training assistants. These are some people I thought might suit you.” 

Jon took the list and glanced over it absently, nodding along. “Yes,” he murmured. “You’d know best.” 

Still reading over the names, he missed the vacant smile spread like an oil slick across Elias’ face. 

The basement was dusty, cluttered, and dim. If there was any order amid the chaos, it was not a system which Jon could yet read. He swore and scrubbed his hands over his face as he stepped back from the filing cabinets he’d been emptying before he’d stepped directly into a cobweb. 

“Are you all right, Jon?” 

Jon glared at his new assistant through his fingers, trying and failing to maintain any dignity as his breath caught in his throat and his heartbeat lurched. “I’m _fine_ , Martin,” he said, his voice thin. “Just stepped into another spiderweb.” 

Martin winced in sympathy. “There do seem to be an awful lot of them down here.” 

“I’ve noticed.” 

“But you know, that’s not really a bad thing. I mean they aren’t hurting anybody—if anything they’ll keep the more pesky bugs away, you know?” 

Jon picked up a heavy book from one of the desks and turned back to the filing cabinet. “It’s an archive, not a nature conservancy.” 

He’d already smashed three of the nasty things that day. He needed a shower. He could feel their legs crawling all over him, just beneath the skin. He shivered and raised the book, looking around for the web. 

“Wait a minute,” Martin said, picking up his glass and a manila envelope. 

“What?” Jon said, trying to decide how to best angle his swing in order to smash the offending arachnid with the greatest efficiency. 

Martin stood at his shoulder. Too close, in his space. Jon sidestepped, bumping his shoulder into the filing cabinet. “Let me help.” 

“I’m perfectly capable of killing one—little spider.” 

“Let me help _it_ , then.” 

Martin deftly caught the spider between the envelope and the glass with a triumphant little smile. “Gotcha. See?” 

He held up the glass. The spider was crawling around the brim, legs reaching up and sliding down the glass as it mapped the sealed circumference of its cage, searching for escape. Its legs. All of its legs, many-jointed, reaching, grabbing, pulling, weaving. Its fat, segmented body, its cluster of eyes, the faint, barely audible sound of its body against the envelope. 

Jon shuddered and licked his lips. His hands were clammy as he wiped them against his slacks. He turned away abruptly, picking up a sheath of papers and mindlessly tapping them against the desk to straighten them. “Get rid of it.” 

“Okay. I’ll just take the little guy outside.” Martin paused. “You know, they really are pretty much harmless. He’s not venomous or anything like that. In fact, they’re sort of remarkable? Did you know not all spiders are solitary, like thousands and thousands of them get together to build one huge, gigantic web and—” 

Jon made a small, muffled sound, the back of his hand pressed to his mouth. The look he gave Martin shut him up immediately. It was frightened and wounded and suspicious and Martin recognized it as the look of someone who was sure he was being picked on but not yet sure why. 

“Just get rid of it,” Jon said, and cleared his throat, schooling his expression into a dismissive, disinterested frown. “We have a lot of work to get done to get this place in order. Stop wasting time.” 

Jon turned away and walked into his office, shutting the door behind him. 

Martin looked over at Tim and Sasha, who had been minding their own business and sorting through a filing cabinet until Jon shut the door. Now they were staring at him. 

Sasha’s mouth twitched as she seemed to be stifling a grin. “Way to go, Martin. It’s the first day and you’ve already gotten in the new boss’ good books.” 

Martin winced and walked closer so they would lower their voices. “Sh.” 

“Seriously, I didn’t peg you as the type to get a kick out of making people squirm.” 

“I wasn’t trying to—I didn’t mean to! I just—really do think they’re neat, that’s all, and thought maybe he’d stop killing them if I showed him how easy they are to catch!” 

“Yeah, well, good luck with that, he hates the damn things,” said Tim. 

Martin groaned. “Oh, god. I didn’t know it was—I mean, lots of people say they don’t like spiders, I didn’t know it was, you know, like a phobia, or whatever. You don’t think he thinks I was, like, tormenting him on purpose, like making fun of him, or something, do you?” 

Tim shrugged, smirking. “Knowing Jon? Yeah, probably.” 

“Well, that’s just great.” 

Tim patted him on the back. “Don’t worry about it. He’s not one to hold a grudge.” 

“He’s not?” 

“I don’t know, I’ve never tortured him with spider facts before.” 

“Great. Thanks, Tim, that makes me feel so much better. Should I...apologize?” 

“God, no. That’ll just embarrass everybody. Just let it go, Martin. It’s fine. I’m just teasing. But do go ahead and get that thing out of here, seriously.” 

“Right,” Martin muttered, and climbed the stairs out of the archives to release the spider outside. 

He took to making what he called (only inside his own head, of course,) spider patrols. If he found an arachnid, he quietly scooped it up and whisked it outside before Jon could see it. Given the archive’s basement location, these little trips could take him several minutes to complete, and more than once he returned downstairs to find Jon peeved with him for vanishing, and he had to make up some nonsense errand as an excuse. But that was fine. It was fine if Jon was irritated with him and didn’t like him much at all. It still felt good to be useful. 

“What’s the freakiest thing you ever saw in Artefact Storage?” Tim asked, before taking a huge bite of his sandwich. It was Friday, and Tim had corralled his fellow archival staff members into joining him at a nearby café for lunch. He was trying to make it a weekly thing. It was good to breathe fresh air and escape the oppressive atmosphere in the basement for a little while. 

Sasha tapped her chin, thinking. “Oh, that’s a tough one. I mean, the haunted dolls, you know, those are pretty creepy.” 

“Haunted dolls?” Martin said. 

“I mean, I don’t know if any of them are actually haunted or not? But either way—still creepy.” 

“You didn’t work there long, though, did you?” Jon asked. 

“No. God, no. I transferred to research soon as I could.” 

“So at least some of the stuff down there must have been genuinely weird, if it freaked you out so much you transferred,” Tim said. “Come on, you’ve got to have some spooky stories.” 

Sasha grimaced. “Thankfully, I don’t. Nothing weird ever happened to me there, it just—there was just this feeling. Being there, around all of those things—it wasn’t right. I don’t know how to explain it. No, none of the artefacts ever moved on their own or anything like that, but they just...they just weren’t right. Especially not the books.” 

“The Leitners,” Jon said. 

“Yeah. Exactly. If we ever had any of those in storage, they were under the strictest security. I saw one, once—but never read any, never so much as touched one.” 

“Good,” Jon said, sounding startled. “I should think not. Just how many of those things do we have?” 

“I...don’t know, off the top of my head. You could check the catalogs, though they’re a bit...out of order, to tell you the truth.” 

“If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you sound spooked by some old books,” Tim said, smirking. “Dozens of statements about monsters under the bed you write off as bullshit, and this is what gets to you?” 

“I didn’t say that,” Jon snapped. 

“Leitners do show up in a lot of statements though, don’t they?” Martin mused. 

“Yes, Martin, good of you to notice.” 

Martin flushed. “I mean—I'm just saying. I know you don’t believe most—or any—of the statements, but if one thing keeps showing up, over and over, from multiple different people—then it just seems like maybe there’s something to it?” 

“They’re just books,” Jon said, staring at the table. “And--it doesn’t matter. His library was destroyed. If there are any stragglers in storage...I’ll have a word with Elias about it.” 

“You do that, Jon, great idea. No way will the artefacts staff be resentful of the new archivist immediately butting into their business,” said Sasha. 

“Really? You don’t think so?” 

She patted his arm where it rested on the table. “Maybe just a little.” 

“Well. They can resent me if they want to, that’s their business. If there are any of those books lying around, well. It’s doing everyone a favor to have them burned.” 

The lighter doesn’t frighten him; it intrigues. In due time, it even comes to be a source of comfort. He likes to hold its familiar slim shape, feel the cool, slick plastic. Flicking the fork and hearing the scratch of the sparkwheel turning comes to satisfy an anxious itch in the back of his mind in times of stress; he can sit there flicking the lighter until he is soothed. The spiderweb pattern might be lace, might be nonsense, just white lines. Symbols in the abstract, divorced from what they signify, failing to connote meaning. A pattern is a pattern, nothing more. 

Later he will learn something of anchors. Later he will still have much to learn about anchors. The sparkwheel turns, ignites, lights the tip of a cigarette. Hand cupping the tender flame, shielding it from wind as it takes and eats the paper. The first drag sucking fire into the tobacco, hand to mouth, inhale-exhale, heat in his chest. Everything imbued with so much ritual and no way to extricate himself from it. This too is an anchor of sorts. Entangled. Was there ever a moment when you might have been free? Or is to be born to be ensnared? 

Jon was on his hands and knees in Artefact Storage, struggling to dig through boxes one-handed. He kept his burned and bandaged hand tucked close to his chest. Every bump and slight movement made him momentarily speechless from pain. He was trying not to think about it. What was one more scar? What was a loss of mobility in one hand to him, when having two good hands had never kept him safe? If his body was the kindling he had to burn through to find answers, so be it. 

This would be easier with help. He could admit that now. But it was too late for that. 

It might not be too late to save them. If not from the institute, then from the Unknowing. 

He sighed, standing with a wince and kicking the box to the side. Nothing. He surveyed the aisles upon aisles of boxes and waited for Beholding to nudge him, his mind a magnet for awful knowledge, drawing him on to terrible secrets like a shark to blood. As he reached overhead to ease a box off a shelf, he heard footsteps on the stairs and tensed, whirled around and froze. 

Martin stood in the doorway and slowly raised his palms. “Hey. It’s just me, it’s okay.” 

Jon released his breath but couldn’t let go of the tension that was making his whole body tremble. “What do you want?” He winced. “I--that came out wrong.” 

“Oh.” 

He didn’t know how it was meant to have come out, or any better way to put it. He was all out of energy for social pleasantries. He had left the circus unfit for human interaction, a tangle of nerves and bruises. 

(Melanie had been applying lotion to her hands in the office the other day, and the smell had made him gag. He’d frozen, staring at her hands, and she’d called him a creep and asked him what his problem was, and how could he explain that the smell made him feel all over again Nikola’s cold, plastic hands touching him, touching all over, so gentle and terrible with the latent threat of violence, so soft upon the skin she planned to flay from his body?) 

“Do you...want some help?” 

“Okay.” 

Martin shuffled closer, slowly. “This one?” he said, pointing to the box Jon had been reaching for. Jon nodded, and watched him lean up and take it from the shelf with ease, holding it firmly with both hands. He expected Martin to dump it on the ground with the other boxes he’d been rifling through, but instead he turned and carried it over to the table. When he caught Jon watching him, standing still, he said, “Come on, sit down. It’s no good for your back, sitting all hunched over on the ground like that.” 

Jon went to the table and reached into the box with his good hand, feeling through its contents. 

“Thank you.” 

“Of course. You might have just said. You could have asked.” 

“Hm.” 

“So...what are you looking for?” 

“I don’t know. Or—I'll know it when I find it.” 

“That’s vague.” 

“Well. That’s all I’ve got for you, at the moment. So much for serving an all-seeing god. Maybe I’m just not very good at this.” 

“I think...that’s a good thing.” 

“It’s not helping us. It’s not what we need.” 

“What we need is...is each other. Not fear gods, or, or whatever the hell they are. Certainly not to be giving ourselves over to them.” 

“Even if it might make things easier?” 

“Yes, Jon. Especially then.” 

Jon huffed, an irritated exhale as he raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m just—hell, Martin, I don’t know what I’m looking for. There’s just got to be something. We’re supposed to be stopping an apocalypse, but—but Tim can hardly stand to look at me, and I’m--well, let’s all be honest, I’m not exactly what you’d call in fighting shape,” he said, gesturing at himself with a bitter, derisive laugh. He cut the sound off harshly before it could give way to the ragged sob that sat permanently lodged in his throat. “And you—and this is going to be _dangerous_.” 

“It’s already dangerous, Jon. You were kidnapped. I don’t--I wish you’d tell me what happened. I know you haven’t told us everything.” 

“What’s the point?” 

“It might help.” 

“That’s not the kind of help we need at the moment.” 

“Isn’t it?” 

Jon turned away from Martin, back towards the aisles of boxes. He grit his teeth as he strained against the static buzz of ignorance, his limited human vision, bearing down upon the veil of the world, looking for a tear in the fabric of the world through which he could See through the dread eye of Beholding. 

Something familiar looked back at him, blinked, and all at once his vision narrowed back to its usual limited scope. His breath hitched. “Oh. There’s something down here.” 

“What--what do you mean?” 

Jon walked forward as though in a dream. He knelt and pulled a box into his lap, reached inside and felt around. His hand bumped up against a small cardboard rectangle. Thick, bulky pages. A familiar worn corner where the cover was bent, the plastic having worn away and leaving a soft, fuzzy patch of exposed cardboard. His heart beat fast. He heard only the blood in his ears, loud. It sounded as though he were travelling very fast through a tunnel with the wind blowing by. His body faded away, became invisible and light as the air as Jon pulled the book from the box. 

The strings attached to his joints lift and pull him to his feet and he cannot find it in himself to be at all surprised. They were always there, the strings—they simply hung loose enough that you didn’t always feel them. Now they were taut. Now he was operated. Strings on his hands, turning the pages, on his eyes, flicking left and right as he read, on his legs as he was led up the stairs and down the hall and back into the archival office. 

“Mr. Spider wants another guest for dinner,” said the book, directly into his head, in a voice like creeping velvet, like moldering lace, like the rough gravel of a palm passing over a microphone, like the quiver in the words of a terrified child. “It is polite to knock.” 

Where there once had been a door to knock at, was now a great black blankness. No—not empty—open. The door was open. Not blankness, not darkness—but a web woven so tightly that no light could only pass through the tiniest of slivers. 

“Mr. Spider wants more.” 

As the ringing in Jon’s ears reached a crescendo loud as though a plane were landing atop the building, the book was smacked out of his hands and sent tumbling through the air, to the floor. 

All at once he was thrust back into his body. His chest heaved as his breath came back, short and shallow. His vision swam. He felt himself shaking. For an instant, blind rage coursed through his body and he turned to glare at whoever had knocked the book out of his hands, and then it was gone in an instant as the strings all snapped and he felt his mind in freefall, wheeling and spiraling out of control. 

“Jon? Can you hear me, Jon?” said Martin, staring at him with wide, fearful eyes. 

“What the fuck is going on?” said Tim, standing along with Melanie and Basira, all three of them staring with looks of mingled concern and confusion. 

Jon opened his mouth but no words came out. 

“Can you—can you talk? No? That’s, that’s all right, just—it's okay. I’m sorry I hit you, I didn’t know what to do, I thought—you didn’t seem like yourself.” 

Jon looked down where the book had fallen. The rest of them did, too. 

“ _A Guest for Mr. Spider_ ,” said Tim. He was closest to where the book had fallen, and leaned down to pick it up, holding it aloft between two fingers, like it was an especially nasty piece of trash. “Looks like a real page-turner, Jon.” 

Jon lurched forward, bumping painfully against a desk as he reached out for the book. “Tim, _don’t_.” 

Tim glared. “Don’t what?” 

Jon felt his head spinning. He knew he needed to slow down his breathing as he felt light-headed and dizzy, but he couldn’t. All he could see was the door opening, those two arms reaching out— 

“Don’t open it. _Please_ , Tim, don’t.” 

Tim scrunched his nose and looked at Martin. “What the hell’s gotten into him?” 

“I don’t--I don’t know. We were down in Artefact Storage, looking for—well, looking for something, and all of a sudden he got real quiet, and I look over and he’s reading this book, and then he started walking up here, so I followed him, but it was like he couldn’t hear me, and—I don’t know, I’ve never seen that book before in my life.” 

Tim’s eyes widened and he dropped the book on the desk. “Whoa, you got this out of Artefact Storage?” 

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.” 

Jon leaned over and snatched the book off the desk. It made his skin crawl to touch it—but he couldn’t just leave it there, where anyone might pick it up, and open it, and start to read. 

“Jon, put that thing down, it’s got to be a damn Leitner,” said Tim. 

“I know what it is.” 

“Then what the hell are you doing with it?” 

“I’m—I—” 

“Don’t you think we’ve got enough supernatural bullshit going on without you reading a goddamn Leitner? What were you thinking?” 

“I—I wasn’t thinking, I—” 

“Obviously not,” said Melanie. “Jesus, Jon.” 

Jon clutched the book to his chest and backed away from them as Martin took a step closer. “Jon, maybe you should let me take that...” 

“No! No, it’s mine, I have to—” 

“What do you mean, it’s _yours_?” said Tim. 

Jon swallowed back the rising bile. “Or, or I’m _its_ , or was almost its, but I—I can’t let you touch it, just—just forget you ever saw it, I’ll take care of it.” 

“Like you’ve taken care of every _other_ fucked up spooky bullshit that’s come crashing into our lives?” 

“That’s not fair, Tim,” said Martin. “Why don’t we just—all try to calm down, all right? Nobody’s reading the Leitner, we’re all okay.” 

“Maybe we’re okay—or else Jon opening that thing summoned an eldritch horror. Again.” 

“No. No, it doesn’t, it shouldn’t work like that, you have to read to the end, and then you have to knock.” 

“Like this?” said Tim, raising a fist to wrap against the door. 

Jon cried out and covered his mouth with his bandaged hand, the other clutching the book with white knuckles. 

Tim lowered his fist without knocking. The anger faded from his face. “Jesus. I was kidding.” 

“Jon. For someone who seems to know how the book works, you seem awful scared of it. What’s going on?” said Basira. 

“I—I’m going to destroy it.” 

“You’ve seen it before.” 

Jon looked down and nodded once. 

“You...you already read it, then?” 

“Yes.” 

“But you’re...still here. What happened?” 

“It--took him.” 

“Took who?” 

Jon rubbed his bandaged hand harshly beneath his eyes, not caring how the motion painfully tugged at his burns. “I don’t--I can’t remember his name. I _can’t remember_.” 

“You don’t mean—Jesus, right now? Like someone who works in Storage? What do you mean, you can’t remember?” 

“No way, Tim, I was there, too. Nothing happened,” said Martin. “He must mean—how long ago was this then, Jon?” 

“I was eight.” 

He found a curious numbness stealing over him. It pushed aside all other emotions and allowed him to get his breathing back under control, to stand up straight and all but force the tremor from his voice. 

“I made a statement about it, even,” he said, with a humorless laugh. “No idea where that ended up. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t mean to open it—but it’s powerful, and it already has its hooks in me. But I’m fine now. I’m going to burn it. If you don’t—don’t trust me to do so, you can watch.” 

“No one should have to be alone with an awful thing like that,” Martin murmured. “I’ll come, but not because I don’t trust you to burn it—you just shouldn’t be alone with it. Nobody should.” 

“Well, you didn’t watch him closely enough last time, so count me in too,” Tim said. “Don’t worry, boss, I’ll smack you quicker than Martin did if you feel an uncontrollable urge to read and unleash unspeakable horrors into the archives again.” 

“I’d like to set a fire in the archives,” said Melanie. “Count me in.” 

“Where should we do this?” asked Basira. 

“The tunnels,” said Jon. “We’ll burn it in the tunnels.” 

Later, Annabelle Cane will leave a statement for him gift-wrapped in cobwebs. He will taste his own fear as he reads it, as he realizes he never meant to begin reading it out loud, as he is unable or unwilling to stop, as he can no longer tell the difference between the two. And his own fear makes the statement sweeter and full of blood and appeases his god and fills the ragged yawning hole in his center that is forever demanding more sustenance just for a moment. A strange duet: his fear and her fear, his patron and hers, an act of auto-cannibalism just as his own statement was almost a whole year ago. 

He will not know where he ends and where Beholding begins. The boundaries between choice and compulsion, instinct and free-will. Everything he learns will be futile—everything he learns will merely be the discovery that what he thought was a choice was merely a step in someone else’s dance, pre-choreographed. The music started long ago. When did the music start? He was caught in a web before he ever knew one was being woven and each twist and turn has only ever drawn him deeper. He can feel the strings all of the time now. 

They didn’t venture far into the tunnels. There was no need, that day, to brave the dark, to pass by the old ring of worms, the old bloodstain on the floor where the old main whose name they are burning was slain. They simply set the book alight inside a trash can stolen from a vacant office and watch it burn. 

“Well,” said Tim, watching black smoke curl up from the fire. “I guess this sort of provides for your tragic backstory. I always did wonder what it was that made you come work here. I mean, we’ve all got one. I’d started to think maybe you were just like this.” 

“This isn’t why I came to work here,” Jon said, peevish again now that the old wound was settling down, the shock of seeing the book again wearing off. “I mean—not totally. It was still a _choice_.” 

“Sure it was. But nobody makes choices in a vacuum.” 

“You said you were eight?” Melanie said. 

“Yes.” 

“That’s very young.” 

“I suppose. I guess I should be over it by now, is what you’re saying.” 

“No. No, that wasn’t it at all.” 

“Well. I got off easy, all things considered.” 

“You wouldn’t say that to anybody else,” said Basira. “You can be a jerk sometimes. But I know you wouldn’t say a thing like that to anybody else.” 

“I don’t even know what happened to him. The one it—took. I mean, I—I can guess. But I can’t be sure he died. Not right away. Did it make him an avatar of the Web first? I don’t know.” 

“Best not to linger on it. There are some things we just don’t get to know. And it wouldn’t do you or him any good anyway,” said Basira. 

“I know you can stand that sentiment about as much as I can,” Jon muttered. 

“I’m just happy to see the damn thing burn,” said Tim, loudly. “Thirty years too late, but still.” 

Jon was quiet for a moment. He thought that might have been Tim’s way of saying he was glad Jon was alive, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. Rather than broach that subject, he said, “Tim, just how old do you think I am, exactly?” 

“Oh. I dunno. You said you were eight when you first read the book, so—” 

“Never mind.” 

Beside him, Jon heard Martin muffling a laugh, and allowed the tiniest of smiles to curve across his own face. 

Georgie hadn’t liked spiders, either. Hadn’t hated them, or feared them in any odd or excessive measure, either, but still. His particular disdain never required explanation. So he never gave one. It was easy not to mention something so anomalous in his past that it stood out like an open sore on an otherwise relatively average life. 

It never occurred to him that he ought to have told her anyway. That it was something she might have liked to have known. That willingness to grant her that vulnerability might have been at least part of the remedy to the discord that came to ail their relationship. It never occurred to him, until many years later, when she gave him her own statement, and he felt gutted, and could only think, _oh, but you never told me_. 

After the coffin, he and Daisy gravitate towards each other. They find reasons to be in the same room. When there are no reasons other than that the other’s company is more grounding than any rib bone ever had been, that is reason enough. The casual touching takes getting used to. For so long now, any touch has hurt and been full of malice. Once, early on, he startled, and was terrified he had offended her—but she had understood, in her own way, the instinctual flinch of a prey animal, and had backed off slowly. From then on she moved more slowly around him, gave him time to move away if he needed to, made sure he heard her if she came up behind him, until gradually the press of her hand against his, her side to his side, became familiar. 

They sat on the ground in his office. The others were out bringing back food for lunch, but neither of them got out much those days. The quiet was more bearable when they were together. It was almost peaceful. 

She bumped her side against his. “You can go ahead and read that. I know you want to.” 

He had a statement sitting in his lap, the tape recorder lying beside him. It flicked on occasionally, as though to poke and prod him into feeding it, like a begging dog whining for food. He kept switching it off. 

“And you’re supposed to be doing your exercises.” 

Daisy growled and tipped her head back against the desk. “I did ‘em this morning.” 

“That was this morning. Now it’s this afternoon.” 

“Thanks, I hadn’t noticed.” 

“Daisy...” 

“What?” 

“Never mind.” 

“Ah, I hate it when you do that.” 

“It’s stupid. It might make you mad.” 

“I don’t have much of a temper these days.” 

“That’s true. Still.” 

“Just spit it out, Sims.” 

“It’s just—if you could go back, and choose for things to be different, would you?” 

She turned her head and blinked at him, all dry and unamused. “You’re right. That is stupid.” 

“Okay, that’s not what I _meant_.” 

“For a guy who talks into a recorder all day, you sure do get tongue-tied a lot.” 

“That’s reading off a script, it’s not the same thing at all as talking.” 

“I guess not. So what did you mean,” she said, nudging him. 

“Right. I don’t mean, if you could go back, and be—unclaimed, fully human, would you. That’s not what I’m asking, that’s...no. I mean, if you could choose to be different, claimed by something else other than the Hunt, would you?” 

“Oh. Hm. I never thought about it.” 

“Never?” 

“The Hunt just...makes sense. Every decision I made, the way I lived...it led me right to it.” 

“But, if you could do it a different way...” 

“It’s not like a damn star chart or a personality test. You choose it. You’re not born under a certain star, and predestined to join the Hunt—but say, even if you were brought up that way, with that in mind, it still wouldn’t be a sure thing. You have to choose it. Either it eats you whole, or burns you alive, or buries you—or you make a choice.” 

“I...I see.” 

“Why do you ask? Thinking of switching teams?” 

“No. Sort of...the opposite, actually, I...I was thinking about how the Web was the first entity I encountered. Before the Eye. And I had this strange thought—I didn’t mean to think it, I felt bad for it immediately, but still, I had this reaction of, of disgust. Of wrongness. I was...don’t take this the wrong way. I think you might be the only one who’ll understand, who won’t--won’t take this as another sign I’m losing my humanity or what not. I’m not _happy_ about any of this. But for a second, I was...glad it wasn’t the Web. Everything you’ve said makes sense to me all of a sudden. I must have chosen the Eye, at some point. You’re right. It just makes sense.” 

“Hm.” 

Daisy stared at him intently. He squirmed. “What?” 

“I’m trying to picture you with the Web now.” 

“What is there to _picture_?” 

“I dunno. Lots of eyes? But spidery ones. Eyes are already your thing.” 

“Well, _don’t_.” 

“I could go Vast. They at least seem to have a sense of humor about things.” 

“Because you’re so well known for your love of all things fun.” 

She growled, and he smiled, a real, wide smile. It was only around him she let slip these little quirks these days, and he’d come to recognize the differences in her tone—now she was being playful. 

“What would you know about fun,” she scoffed. “Everybody with the Eye is a big wimpy nerd.” 

“Don’t forget neurotic.” 

“God forbid.” 

“You could go Spiral if you want a sense of fun. Although theirs is a little twisted.” 

“Was that supposed to be a _joke_?” 

“So it’s funny when _Basira_ makes a pun, but I’m not allowed?” 

“It’s about tone and timing, Sims, and Basira’s is impeccable.” 

“ _Sure_ it is. You know, Basira’s sort of ‘with the Eye’ these days, too. Does that make her a—what was it—wimpy nerd?” 

“Basira is the exception to the rule. And she’s no avatar, more like a freelancer.” 

Jon snorted. “Is it—is it bad that we’re laughing about this? I mean it’s really not funny. It’s terrible.” 

“Sometimes you have to laugh if you don’t want to cry.” 

Jon gave a sharp burst of laughter, hand going to his face. “What is that—is that from a Hallmark card, or something?” 

“It’s just wisdom. Goes to show what you know.” 

“I’d never have chosen the Web. Would I? We keep talking about choice, and we have to, because we’ve got to hold ourselves accountable, but really—if it had taken me—if I’d been terrified, if it had been choose the Web or die, or worse—how can I know what I’d have done?” 

“You can’t know. That’s the ultimate pointlessness of your Eye. Even it can’t know everything.” 

“Well, that was never the point. The point is more about—being watched, and trying to know, even if the what you’re trying to know is terrible, and going to kill you.” 

“How tantalizing. I can see how it compels you.” 

“You see? This is what I’m talking about, you’d never—maybe you’d never have been able to choose it, the same as I couldn’t have chosen the Hunt, because it’s just not—not in our nature. Not the way we were before, not the way we are now. Maybe we aren’t so altered. Maybe we were always like this. Is that a comfort? Or is that terrible?” 

“What sort of sick bastard chooses the Buried?” Daisy growled. “While we’re on the subject. The Hunt is a high, it’s all adrenaline and purpose, movement—where's the draw in that damn coffin?” 

“I don’t know. It’s all this...mingling of terror and ecstasy. One demands the other. What is the Buried? Being held—but being held too tightly—wanting to be at the center—but to be at the center also means to be pinned and crushed—I don’t know. I don’t understand any of them. Not even the Eye. I think...I myself, I couldn’t choose Corruption. But...I felt like I understood something about Jane Prentiss, when I read her statement. I understand them all—at least I feel what they felt—but she made a sort of sense. Not logically, but...emotionally?” 

“The bug lady?” 

Jon sighed. “Yes, the bug lady. Call her Jane, please.” 

“I think it’s interesting, thinking about this stuff. But I also think you take it too much to heart. Sometimes knowing doesn’t help.” 

“So I keep being told.” 

“And you keep not listening.” 

“Still. I guess my point was—did I have a point? I don’t know. I’m glad it wasn’t the Web.” 

“Then you’d have to eat flies instead of statements. And lie. You’re a terrible liar. Martin, on the other hand...” 

“Martin is not a _liar_.” 

Daisy gave him a small, teasing grin. “Martin is an _excellent_ liar.” 

“How can you say that! He’s--he’s nice, and helpful, and polite!” 

“To you, maybe. He can be a real prick when he wants to be, you know.” 

“Well. If it’s to somebody like Elias, then that just makes you a good person.” 

Daisy snorted. “I never said he was a bad person. I said he was a good liar. Elias is a liar and a bad person—Martin is just good at lying. There’s a difference, see.” 

“I guess so.” 

They were quiet for a moment. Then Jon said, “I miss him, you know.” 

“I know.” 

There came a knock on the door. “Jon?” 

“Come in.” 

Basira opened the door, expressing no surprise to find them seated on the floor. “We’ve got lunch,” she said, holding up a bag. 

Daisy used the desk to hoist herself to her feet and offered her hand to Jon. “Should’ve read that while you had the chance, now you’ll have to wait.” 

“What?” 

“Come on.” 

He opened his mouth. A thousand protests and excuses leapt to mind—but when he really got down to it, he could think of no good reason why he shouldn’t take her hand. So he did. 

Even after knowing that going into the Lonely marked him and sealed Jonah Magnus’ plan to bring on the apocalypse, Jon could not regret it. Martin closed the door and he settled in to read with love in his heart, more love than he’d known himself capable of, and the love remained and became something wild and raging as he grew queasy and sick with trying to stop himself from reading. He could not. He felt hysterical laughter in his throat but could not laugh, could not shut his eyes, could not make his own voice silent. He felt the strings again, lodged in his belly, pulling words out of his throat. He could not choose not to read. But even as he read Jonah’s awful list of all the ways he’d been marked—he knew he had chosen them all. 

He would not have both his ribs back. At the time he had deemed their loss necessary. 

He wouldn’t choose to die and never wake from his coma. He’d never meant to do anyone harm—he'd only wanted to live. 

He would not choose to leave the coffin lid shut and abandon Daisy to the buried. Not even to spare himself another mark. 

He wouldn’t leave the Slaughter’s bullet lodged in Melanie’s leg. Not even knowing she would retaliate with a stab wound that would send him one step further into becoming an object, a thing, an archive. 

He would not let Martin walk alone in the Lonely. Not even to thwart an apocalypse. 

That was what Gertrude would have done. But Gertrude had been wrong, too. 

Maybe sometimes he had a choice, and maybe sometimes it only felt or seemed like he did, and maybe he never did at all, and maybe the only choice in life was choosing what to believe. 

Maybe it was already too late.

The day he returned to work after waking in a hospital bed in which, he’d been told, he should have died, the archives were quiet. Sasha was dead. Tim was dead. Daisy was gone. Martin was—elsewhere. 

Jon walked into the cafeteria and suddenly saw it full of mourners on that strange day on which they had come together to remember a woman none of them had ever really known, and all at once he understood everything and nothing and he wanted to ask the few people in there eating lunch, perfect strangers, if they’d known Tim Stoker, and if not would you like to? But he’d made a promise, and he was scared of asking questions these days, so instead he locked himself in his office. 

So many of his belongings were gone, lost, thrown away. But in his desk, along with a jar of ashes, was the web-patterned lighter. He flicked it to hear the sparkwheel catching, the familiar soothing motion, and it occurred to him that Martin might have held this lighter just so, while he was lost in the wax museum; that Martin might have used this very lighter to burn those statements. 

Jon thought about anchors. He thought about webs. 

He felt the strings again, of old. He had known them all along. They were not only for making puppets jerk and dance. How many hands had this lighter passed through? He knew of two of them. Nothing was untethered. The web stretched wide across the world, glinting silver gossamer, and one could not breath in North America that one in the Maldives would not shiver. What strange wonder, what annihilating grace. He swore he could hear the weavers threading, could feel the strings. 


End file.
